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Russia Responds by Punishing Orphans

When Congress passed legislation this month establishing permanent normal trade relations with Russia, it included travel and financial sanctions against Russians accused of gross human rights violations, particularly those involved in the suspicious death of anti-corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. At the time, I counseled against “poking Russian officials in the eye with sanctions.” The Russian legislature is currently contemplating its response to that poke, and it doesn’t look good.

Having made clear its intention to retaliate in some way for the Magnitsky bill, which it deemed a national insult and intrusion into domestic affairs, Russia has decided to target America’s own human rights abusers—adoptive parents of Russian orphans. Russian media have been fueling a controversy over abuse by American parents of adopted Russian children, and the Magnitsky bill gave the legislature in Moscow an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. At first, Russian leaders called for a travel ban on specific people accused of abuse in an obvious parallel to the U.S. sanctions. The current proposal under consideration is to ban all adoptions by American citizens.

Russia has an impressive surplus of orphans and is one the most common countries of origin for international adoptions in the United States. Thousands of children will be denied access to loving families. Not all the blame lies with Congress and its attempt to be a global human rights cop, but the end surely condemns the means.